Ebook: Etruscans: Italy's Lovers of Life

Alexandria, Virginia: Time-Life Books, 1995. — 168 pp. — (Lost Civilizations). — ISBN 0-8094-9045-5.Few civilizations have shone so brightly and faded as quickly. Bursting from a relatively small homeland, about the size of West Virginia or Wales, the Etruscans in the seventh century BC expanded west and south, to found colonies on the Tyrrhenian island of Corsica and near Naples and to create a cluster of settlements that gave them control over much of the fertile region known today as Campania. In the following century, they moved north, across the Apennines into the Po valley, setting up a chain of towns along the Adriatic coast. Most important for posterity, from the end of the seventh century BC until 510 BC they provided a dynasty that ruled Rome itself. In the words of the Roman historian Livy, Etruria at the height of its power "filled the whole length of Italy from the Alps to the Sicilian strait with the fame of her name."